Uncanny Ally
by Amelia Island
Summary: Post-Jedha, Galen Erso's location continues to elude the Rebels, inciting frustration and galvanizing risk. A botched mission leads to an emergency interface, and Jyn doesn't know which is worse: losing the security droid she loves to hate, or rediscovering him behind the eyes of an all-too-human pilot. Jyn/K-2SO
1. Chapter 1

**CHAPTER ONE**

 **REBEL BASE, YAVIN FOUR**

 **POST-MISSION**

"Captain…"

Cassian Andor leaned forward, the grim set of his mouth deepening. The operating table wasn't big enough for all seven plus feet of his security droid, although it had managed to hold up well enough beneath K-2SO's inhuman weight. The droid was hooked to a mobile command console, like a Rebel human to a heart monitor. There was a small crowd of engineers gathered around the projected hologram, muttering in low tones.

"… please tell me my receptors are malfunctioning and that is not Jyn Erso standing behind you."

Cassian turned and rose, his expression tight. A faint sheen of perspiration gave his skin a fevered glow beneath the fierce facility lights. The captain stepped aside wordlessly to allow the Rebel woman access to his seat. He ran a hand over his stubble and moved off, and Jyn sagged down onto his vacated stool.

Like the rest of them, Jyn Erso the looked worse for wear. Then again, K-2SO had never known her to look otherwise. Her self-cut hair was tangled into filthy segments; soot streaked her pale, bloodless face. She looked thinner than ever, even though K-2 had known her to sneak more than her allotted provisions time and time again. Only her eyes glimmered with mute life above her slack, miserable expression as she took him in.

The droid lay in uncharacteristic silence for a long moment. "I told you what the odds were," he said finally. "I don't know why you bother bringing me along at all if you aren't going to listen to what I have to say."

The droid supposed it was more fitting to speak of missions in the past tense at this point, and wondered why he had avoided doing so. His armor was riddled with blaster entry points. His innermost circuits were bared; several of them sparked blue occasionally, but there were few that hadn't been cauterized by plasma when they were severed.

There had been only a momentary pause in the assault, in the instant he stepped out in front of Jyn, before the enemy soldiers realized he was no longer one of theirs and opened fire. She had been stranded without cover when Imperial backup arrived, but K-2SO's self-insertion in the proceedings had bought the Rebel enough time to shelter beneath him and take them all out.

Best not to dwell on the consequences. He wasn't human. He didn't process pain. What he _did_ process was the expression of anguish on the woman's face. His receptors flickered slightly, almost as if he was blinking.

"You look distressed, Jyn Erso." The tart accent was still there, but the observation was audibly quieter. The droid was aware of the others in the room and adjusted his pitch to a more private setting. "Are you angry that Imperial forces robbed you of your chance to dismantle me? In fact, I'm not so certain one of these holes _wasn't_ caused by you. _Was_ I hit from behind? I can't recall. Perhaps you are exactly as opportunistic as I've always thought you were."

Jyn's hand jerked for her hip holster, but it appeared her weapons had been confiscated upon arrival. She aborted the move at the last second; still, K-2SO could see that her hand shook at her side with barely-checked emotion.

"How dare you?" she whispered furiously. "Why would you _risk_ yourself for me?" Her brittle voice cracked on the word.

She asked him why? There was no adequate explanation 'why'. Maybe the droid would have compiled a sound theory for her once upon a time, but that part of his processing had already shut down. At least his winning personality was still fully operational.

"I was built to be a weapon," K-2 replied. "To be used by the Empire, and then by the Rebels. I don't hate what I am. My self-esteem has never been higher."

Cassian quietly snorted from where he leaned against the back wall with his arms crossed.

"But in the end, I chose to be a shield."

The droid felt strangely comfortable telling her all this. Jyn was also a weapon, albeit one that had tried—and failed—to take her own agency into her hands time and time again. She hadn't been programmed from birth for the war, like he had, but her father's name and blood assured her a square on the galactic Dejarik board whether she wanted it or not.

Would she press him for a better answer? K-2 wasn't sure himself what it was. Projected behind the droid, unbeknownst to him, his file on Jyn Erso was accessed, alongside logs of the calculations he had commenced and never finished running before stepping out in front of her. His split-second reaction had originated from someplace else. The engineers exchanged another weighted look at this discovery. To them, there was no accounting for the droid's response outside of a glitch.

"I hope you didn't lose your blaster," K-2SO mentioned. Nothing she did ever escaped him. "They're going to need you now more than ever. Oh well, I suppose you can always 'find' another one."

He lurched off the table suddenly, a pantomime of a man having a seizure, as a misfire in his circuits sent a shock through him. The engineers attempting the system download reared back from the hologram. Cassian came forward at once to pull his subordinate out of her seat. "Jyn, get back," the captain said tersely.

There were many reasons why Jyn Erso shouldn't be near him in his final moments. He might revert to his old programing. An accidental flail might knock her flat or cave in what unbroken ribs she had left. Still, it was the first time the droid found himself actively wishing she would disobey the captain's orders.

And disobey Jyn did. She threw Cassian's hands off her and nearly upended the stool. The captain backed off immediately, although he didn't retreat far. His own face was a mask of misery, but he kept the blade of his emotion buried to the hilt, as always. The damage on the inside was already done, but he wouldn't alert anyone to it. He would bear his own pain alone.

"The Rebellion needs _you!"_ Jyn shouted. "You're a lot more useful to them than I'll ever be! Who's going to stop me from flying off with more blasters than I can carry? Look alive, Kay-Two!" She kicked the side of the table. "Or I'll make off with an entire ship while I'm at it!"

"Oh, I have no doubt you'll take everything with you that isn't nailed down," K-2SO remarked. "And when they blow you out of low orbit my sacrifice will have been for nothing."

Their quarrel was rapid-fire. They were running out of time. There was a desperate quality to the exchange, as if neither could stand to leave so many rapier cuts undelivered, so many insults untraded. Every retort was an observation of a perceived fault, a singular trait, as if to say: _I see you. I've seen you all along._

She could kick the table all she wanted. She could tell the unliving to look alive. She could pray to the Force or to the limited resources of the Rebel engineers, or both, but the droid didn't need to run diagnostics to know what the odds were.

"You're trembling." His digits flexed off the table towards her and captured her unflinching fist in his own. "Cold in here. That's the thing about being a droid: you're never warm."

He was starting to relay nonsense. It appeared as if Jyn Erso would be allowed to have the last conscious word after all.

"Captain, can I speak to you?"

Cassian turned to a hovering medic, pain seeped into every line and furrow of his face. "We're losing him," the woman whispered hastily. "We're going to lose it all if we don't act quickly."

"Were you able to download the map to the enemy facility?"

"That's a negative, Captain."

"And the procedure…?"

"It's something that's never been attempted before. On the outer planets, maybe, but not here." The medic shifted uncomfortably. "The pilot has already been informed of the chances of success, and has given his consent to perform it postmortem. He passed just a moment ago."

Cassian grimaced. "What about Kay? Has he given his consent?"

"We're beyond that now," the medic intoned. "The droid's processing is shutting down. He'll begin cycling through old conversations as his memory wipes. Every second we expend debating the ethics we risk further data loss. Every moment the pilot's brain becomes less viable." She paused before continuing. "There's just the matter of…"

Two pairs of weary eyes fell on Jyn Erso's hunched shoulders. "I'll take care of her," Cassian said quietly. "You just do what has to be done."


	2. Chapter 2

**CHAPTER TWO**

 **PORT CITY, RING OF KAFRENE**

 **THE MISSION**

K-2SO was used to these visits to the Expansion Region. Cassian had met here often with his contact, Tivik, when the latter made landfall in the Ring of Kafrene's marketplace. It just so happened that today's mission—to disrupt the Empire's latest and last shipment of Jedha kyber crystals—brought them to the asteroid belt's bustling port once more.

"I'm going to check in at the rendezvous point. Wait here." Cassian leveled the order at his two subordinates. K-2SO's head swiveled conspicuously to look at Jyn from where he sat behind the command console. He failed to understand why the girl remained with them as an operative post-Jedha. She was about as useful to the cause as a loose turret cannon—even if her aim _did_ tend to be more precise. More worryingly, her presence was a constant distraction to Cassian… and K-2SO still wasn't certain she could be trusted when the captain's back was turned.

Cassian, knowing his audience, disembarked before either of them could form a protest. An awkward pause fell between droid and human, but it lasted only until K-2SO could be certain Cassian was out of earshot.

"You could leave, you know," he suggested. _"I_ certainly wouldn't stop you."

Jyn glanced up at his overture. She was currently rifling through the pockets of her jacket (on loan from the Rebellion) which lay sprawled across her knees. "Really?" she asked after an extended pause, jade-green eyes flat as her tone of voice. "You'd let me go just like that?"

"As far as I'm concerned you've served _your_ purpose," K-2SO replied.

"Imagine that!" She gave a cold laugh, but there was a bitter life to it, in the same way that the wastes of the Hoth system held life: barely supported. "After all these years, someone actually 'concerned'!"

"My concern for you extends about as far as my reach," the droid offered a comparison, "which, as you know all too well, is sufficient in either case to demonstrate just how limited my regard is for you." He ran a quick visual scan out the cockpit viewport. "The terrain reads friendly. These are your people, Jyn Erso." A benevolent sweep of his hand. "Go to them."

Jyn heaved herself to her feet. She paused by the shuttered door, whipping her scarf around in a quick adjustment, mistrustful eyes still studying the droid. "So you really are just going to release me, then?" she repeated. "Like some stray Bantha kid your captain brought home?"

"More like a Kowakian monkey-lizard gumming up the works," the droid corrected as he punched the hatch open for her. "Goodbye, Jyn Erso. Try to stay out of trouble… but we both know the odds of that."

Her hesitation wouldn't have registered with a human observer. He wondered if it even registered with her. He would have scanned her face for more information, but by the time he felt curious enough to do so, whatever mysterious process of evaluation Jyn Erso privately underwent completed; she shot him a last look, and slipped out the door without so much as a parting insult.

And now K-2SO was left alone, and wondering if the disappointment he had glimpsed on her face was real. It didn't make _logical_ sense, of course, for someone with Jyn Erso's criminal profile to feel conflicted about the escape he had just offered her. She was a survivor, an opportunist, an interplanetary tearaway. She was impulsive, though not completely unintelligent. As the droid's receptors traveled over the empty space she had previously occupied, he took this last concession back. There was her blaster, lying loaded where she had sat. He rose out of the cockpit chair to retrieve it, his digits unfurling beneath the weapon as he weighed it. His hand was built overlarge, but not a bad fit, all things considered. He had imagined himself holding one often.

Had she forgotten it? Unlikely. Was it her intention to return the property she had stolen? If yes, it indicated an aspect of her personality that had been heretofore unpronounced, maybe even nonexistent. _And_ she had kept the jacket, he reminded himself.

There was the third option, in that she anticipated he would attempt to return it to her. Not a good bet to gamble on a droid's empathy.

It was a fine idea, however, to gamble on his boredom. There wasn't much opportunity to use a newly-acquired blaster out of defensive necessity cooped up inside the shuttle. The bay door slid open a second time, and K-2 ducked out.

It didn't take him long to find her. Amid the sea of rabble he rose as tall as a motive watchtower; whatever the nature of his programing, citizens dispersed before an Imperial droid. He decided to steer toward the first commotion to catch his interest and wasn't disappointed. A small crowd formed a circle around three traders and the pint-sized woman sweeping them all to the ground with a low kick. Judging by the amount of fresh blood in evidence, it appeared the fight had commenced almost as soon as she had disembarked.

One of Jyn's victims rose with murder in his eyes. He drew a telescopic melee weapon and extended it with a jerk of his wrist; the spitting of a contraband electrostaff filled the air, but Jyn's back was turned as she ground the hand of one of the men beneath the heel of her boot.

The assailant was well within the droid's reach. K-2SO caught the wrist suspended in space. Squeezed. The tinder-dry crunch of splintering bone, and the man's abnormally-pitched scream, accompanied his dropping of the staff. The droid flung all human wreckage to the side carelessly. "What fresh delinquency is this?" he asked Jyn.

The woman straightened, flipping her hair back from her eyes with a twitch of her head. "Nothing I can't handle," she panted.

"Your reassurance is unconvincing."

One of her eyebrows cocked. "Did you need to be reassured?" she inquired.

He should have an easy answer for that. Perhaps his processors jammed. Jyn herself only appeared to just now realize where they stood, and under what reuniting circumstances. The crowd trickled back into the scene, flowing into the available space like water; break-outs of violence were commonplace and inconsequential.

Completing his errand would be an adequate enough answer, K-2SO decided. The droid held out the tragically unused blaster. "You forgot this."

Jyn's eyes narrowed. "I'm not a thief," she returned. There was no possible expression that could register on his physiognomy, but she carried on as if she had seen one all the same. "… not right now, anyway. I return what I borrow. When I intend to own something permanently, I prefer to take it from people less hurting for resources."

"Then consider it a _very_ generous reimbursement from the Resistance for all your hard work," he concluded. Jyn's posture thawed, and after a moment's careful deliberation she accepted the blaster. The difference in their hand size was illuminating, but he would not make the mistake of underestimating her as Cassian continued to; however, he _would_ allow that outward appearances might lead an observer to fatally misjudge her.

"All right." Jyn holstered the blaster. "So long, then."

"What could they have possibly wanted?" the droid wondered aloud as Jyn turned away… and he abbreviated his own strides to accompany her. "Surely you don't have enough credits to tempt that kind of operation?"

Jyn did not smile in the normal sense—she rarely did _anything_ in the normal sense—but her mouth twisted, and some suppressed information he wasn't privy to flickered behind her eyes. "I'll tell you when you're older," she replied.

"I'll ask Cassian," he decided.

"You had better do that."

"Where will you go now?"

Jyn paused before a stall to examine a disfigured piece of fruit, before turning to him with a sigh of exasperation. Now she was looking at him as if _he_ was a specimen she found overripe. "That's none of your business," she stated.

She didn't know. Perhaps she had never had a destination, before or after her capture.

"Would you like to know your chances of being incarcerated again?" he inquired.

"If I didn't know any better, I'd say you're going to miss having someone to abuse," she remarked as she returned the item unpurchased. K-2 doubted she had much to bargain with besides her blaster and necklace—two possessions she couldn't normally be pressed to part with.

"There is nothing I miss," the droid replied as they continued down the line of merchants. "Or intend to miss. My retention of what's important makes me an asset to the Rebellion."

"You're an asset, all right," Jyn echoed hollowly. "But you're also just a droid. Aside from the respect Cassian shows you, you can't deny that you're more instrument than insurgent to those people. It must have been nice to have someone else occupying the lowest rung for a change."

"No." His response was blunt, automatic. "You're right in your estimation of me, although undoubtedly trying to be offensive. But I was quite content before you showed up."

"Do you really resent me that much?"

"I don't resent you, Jyn Erso." K-2SO's optics tracked to her standing so far below him. "I just disprove of you."

Jyn rolled her eyes. "Romantic."

K-2SO was already looking off elsewhere, but at this his attention snapped back to her with renewed focus. The word's application, even ironic, had never been extended to him before. He thought it an odd choice. He thought _Jyn Erso_ an odd person, and was doubtful she had known much romance in her life at any juncture, ironic or otherwise.

It was already the most processing he had ever personally devoted to the subject.

"I don't recall you ever being this talkative before," he mentioned. Generally the woman's stony silences could put even Cassian's reserve to shame.

At the next stall, Jyn toyed with a figurine. "Maybe it's because I have nothing to say."

"That is a lie," K-2 returned. "I remember when I first saw you shackled in the back of that prisoner transport on Wobani. Your posture, your eyes, said quite a deal. From that introduction, I knew you were more trouble than it was worth expending our—as you said—sparing resources on. But did anyone listen to me? No. They never do when it counts. And there you were, exactly as I promised them they would find you: filthy, feral, hardly recognizable as human and ready to turn against your rescuers at a moment's notice. Your manacles were the most extravagant thing on you. I'll admit I wasn't certain you were even capable of speech, until Cassian informed me of your limited contributions to the meeting with…"

K-2SO trailed off as he registered her paling, increasingly closed-off expression. Perhaps his account of her had been too accurate. Normally with Jyn—with anyone—he didn't err on the side of discretion… but he didn't like to see the fire in her dim as a result of his words. Not when the excitement of provocation, of an equal return on his investment, was what he had come to expect.

"… I find this side of you _less_ intolerable," he finished.

"Your metaphors are consistent, at least." Jyn's scowling mouth gave rueful twist. "You _did_ sound like you were describing a Kowakian monkey-lizard just now." She shot him a quick look, but despite her (perhaps purposeful) furtiveness, K-2SO could see no basis for his own comparison at present.

"You may add that to your mental list of romantic sentiments," he said. "If I had to guess, it is a short list."

In the next moment, Jyn turned and shoved him roughly in the direction of a yawning alleyway. She could not move him bodily, of course, and it was the height of the woman's arrogance to think her own fierce brand of diminished strength would be up to the task now, but K-2SO took a corresponding step backward into darkness as if he had been successfully pushed. The wild look in her eye told him she probably had a good reason for the sudden retreat… even if his processing couldn't help but continue:

"Halt, Jyn Erso. You cannot use my body to further supplement items on your list. I will call for help."

"Shut _up!"_ she hissed. She wheeled away as if she heard something, then backed herself against him until she all but disappeared inside his shadow. The droid rested his hands unthinkingly on her shoulders. When she craned her head to look out again, he followed suit. He thought he could now safely identify the cause for her alarm. There were two Imperial intelligence officers, filth-streaked and dubiously-disguised, speaking to one another rapidly in throaty rasps near the mouth of the alley.

"What are they saying?" Jyn whispered.

"… not much," K-2 said after a moment, "and I'm not surprised you can't understand them. They're speaking in Ubese, and making a poor attempt at an already poorly-adapted language. It sounds as if they've had a run-in previously with Saw Gerrera's gang on Jedha." He felt Jyn's body stiffen beneath him at the name, but was more surprised that his close proximity hadn't made her tense already. He understood that Imperial droids of his model were not exactly comfortable to be around.

The next instant she made to jolt forward, and K-2SO felt confirmed in his decision to have been restraining her—or something similar—all along. His grip became far less gentle, then, to prevent her from acting on whatever ill-advised impulse possessed her.

"Did one of them just say 'Bor Gullet'?" she demanded.

"Yes," he said. "They aren't being especially inventive while speaking in code, are they? If I'm not mistaken, they're discussing the interrogation technique used on the pilot… although not the incident involving ours, specifically." The droid lapsed in his translation briefly as he listened. "It seems your mentor was rather liberal with what members of the Imperial army he chose to unleash it on," he continued. "There are a few soldiers recovering from it on Thustra."

The alleyway fell silent, until Jyn tilted her head back to stare up at him. "What do you mean, 'recovering'?" she repeated.

And then K-2SO realized the implications of the conversation they had just overheard. The defector, Bodhi Rook, had been successfully extracted, though he wasn't as whole in his faculties as he had once been. He knew his own name, eventually—and even the name of Galen Erso, Jyn's father—but as to Erso's location, and any sort of information about his route and the whereabouts of the Imperial base… _that_ information had been given up for lost, as had Rook's attention span. The pilot spent most of his days out of the infirmary wandering the hangar with an attending droid, muttering to himself and staring darkling-eyed at all the machinery, as if he still hoped in his half-madness to jog a useful memory.

"It would appear that the Empire has synthesized a remedy," K-2 concluded. He didn't like that Jyn Erso's finite human intelligence appeared to be working faster than his own. "Saw Gerrera is not the first to use this interrogation technique. The Empire has used it themselves, and undoubtedly recovered multiple prisoners of war released or left improperly guarded due to the Bor Gullet's known side effects… if they were able to successfully recover the memories of those prisoners, they might also stand to recover useful information that enemy interrogators saw no reason to conceal in the first place."

"If we locate the lab where the Empire synthesizes it, we're that much closer to finding my father." Jyn's eyes flashed, and her contemptuous mouth morphed into a smile. Something about the woman's expression boded worse than the mugshot the droid kept stored for her in his memory bank.

"Oh, I don't like the look of that at all," K-2SO said.


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N: Happy Episode Eight! Here is a new chapter, a year later, to celebrate!**

* * *

 **CHAPTER THREE**

 **PORT CITY, RING OF KAFRENE**

 **THE MISSION**

Sparks of sapphire blue flew through the air of the alley, flaming out like old stars in the darkness.

"Hurry," Jyn whispered. She flattened herself against the wall to look out at the crowded throughway once more.

"Your advice, Jyn Erso, is both unwanted and unnecessary," K-2SO remarked. He held the buckled KX security droid with one hand—a testament to his strength—as he forced the connection with his other. "And do you seriously think anyone will question what we're doing back here?"

"They might," Jyn said. "This isn't Jedha. So it's better to hurry."

K-2SO retracted his data spike and rose. He let the spent unit slip from his hand like rubbish, and it crashed to the ground in a lifeless heap. _No, not life,_ Jyn thought. Then again, what did K-2SO think of what he had just done? Was it akin to murder, or did he consider his clones as expendable as the rest of the Resistance did?

He kicked the carcass into a cloaking shadow with his foot, and Jyn thought she had her answer.

"I think you're more worried about Cassian finding out what we're up to," K-2 said.

"Aren't you?"

"Yes."

"Then we agree it would be a good thing if you were able to download the coordinates to the base," Jyn said. She cast another surveying look out at the port's main drag, before motioning the all-clear. They moved together back out into the open, just a security droid and his disheveled human handler on a leisurely stroll. They certainly weren't the most unusual pair navigating the market together, although Jyn couldn't help the occasional fervent darting of her eyes to ensure they weren't being overly scrutinized. Appearing suspicious of everyone around her probably helped her travel more discreetly, considering those she passed among often wore the same look.

"Not base," the droid corrected truculently. "Medical facility. Unlike most of the Empire's installations, this one was established for the express purpose of putting people _back_ together."

"So you did get the information we need?" Jyn kept her voice neutral, even as excitement surged through her veins like oxygen-accelerated ship fire. She had already resolved to locate her father _without_ the Rebellion's help after K-2SO evicted her from the ship, but such an endeavor would have taken many standard months, if not years. Now she was this much closer to reuniting with her only living family… to getting answers…

But it was only silence that answered her query. She turned, expecting to have lost the droid momentarily in the crowd, but K-2 still took measured, stilt-like strides beside her. He had simply reverted to steely uncommunicativeness.

Anger flared hot in her chest, the flashpoint at the end of the ship's corridor. Saw had done his best to teach her temperance, and the Wobani labor camps had certainly taught her the value of bowing her head and holding her tongue, but none of these were natural states for Jyn. "Kay?" She let the threat be known in her voice, but gave the droid one final chance to answer her.

"The information I carry is relevant to the Rebel Alliance," he replied. "And as your allegiance seems to change by the hour, I'm afraid I can't relay it to you."

"You double-crossing rust bucket," Jyn seethed. "You wouldn't have known to seek out the information if it wasn't for me!"

"I've already taken the liberty of classifying it. Sorry, Jyn Erso, but you do not possess the proper clearance."

"If you were human, I'd wring your neck," she avowed.

"I'm certain you would. In fact, there is a hundred percent chance of you—"

Jyn enacted the prophecy before he could finish. She stopped walking, turned, and lunged at him. He may not have a set of working vertebrae to wrap her hands around, but she was determined to find _some_ part of him to mangle. If she got lucky, maybe she could dismantle his vocabulator and use it to bargain for—

The droid caught her wrist and lifted her off the ground. Jyn latched onto the hand before her arm dislocated from its socket. She dangled in front of him, glaring into his receptors, and momentarily ignoring the pain of being held aloft like a ragdoll. "And here we were having such amiable conversation," K-2SO said. "Why must you always be so difficult?"

"Why must _you_ be so—" She unleashed a volley of curses she had picked up from her time on the Mid Rim that she was banking on him to translate.

"Hurtful, Jyn Erso. That's hurtful."

 _"Droid!"_

K-2SO's head whipped around, and so did Jyn's. The market crowd parted as a stormtrooper jogged towards them. Behind him, Jyn saw at least half a dozen more white suits surrounding the U-Wing with their blasters drawn. They had already forced open the bay door and were making their way up the plank.

She let one more curse slip out past her lips.

"That… isn't good," K-2 agreed.

She had no time to reflect on how stupid they had been. The approaching trooper halted, cradling his blaster in a relaxed ready position. He had clearly misidentified K-2, and Jyn wondered if the security droid the two of them had left crumpled behind them in the alley was who the trooper thought he addressed now. "There you are! Is this the pilot you've apprehended? Has she presented you with scandocs?"

"She doesn't have any," K-2SO said. The hair on the back of Jyn's neck rose. What was he _doing?_ "This is Liana Hallik. She recently escaped from the Imperial labor camp on Wobani."

She renewed her struggle against him, and tried uselessly to kick her way to freedom. K-2 lengthened his arm to increase the distance between them without letting her go.

"She was the only one onboard the vessel?" the stormtrooper demanded.

"Yes. I observed her disembarking. She was _the only one onboard the vessel."_

And suddenly Jyn knew what Kay was doing: he wasn't just giving up the U-Wing, he was throwing her _under_ the U-Wing. If the troopers bought his story and took her into custody, they would confiscate the ship—and if these were anything like the rank and file Imperial soldiers Jyn had dealt with in the past, they would clap themselves on the plastoid and call it a day. A security droid wasn't capable of lying, especially not to them.

She could feel her face wanting to fall, to collapse in an expression of betrayal and dismay, but she tightened her jaw and pushed her lips out. She narrowed her eyes. And she saw, over K-2's left shoulder plate, Cassian standing in the crowd assembling around the transport. His lidded gaze locked with hers, and his hand delved for something in the inner lining of his jacket. A muscle in his cheek twitched.

"Remote detonator?" K-2 guessed. Her eyes returned to the droid, and she tucked her chin infinitesimally.

"What was that?" the stormtrooper snapped.

"I said: did the troops sweep for a remote—"

An explosion rocked the market corridor as the U-Wing's cockpit ejected in a volcano of fire. Black smoke roiled off the vessel as a chain of smaller explosions—and a chorus of stormtrooper screams—could be heard from within. The U-Wing buckled as it began to fall to flaming pieces. The spectators on the ground scattered.

K-2SO released his grip on her wrist, and Jyn dropped to earth. She landed and rolled, taking the stormtrooper to the ground with a sweep of her leg. His blaster clattered to the ground, and she kicked it. It spun off into the crowd and was quickly requisitioned by several pairs of eager hands. It vanished into the enterprising black hole of Kafrene.

"Ah. Blast. She's getting away," K-2SO noticed.

 _"Pursue her!"_ the stormtrooper bellowed in a furious rip of static.

"Orders confirmed. Hail the Galactic Empire!" the droid threw in as he jogged after her.

Jyn drew her blaster and fired wildly off her mark, missing him with gusto as she zigzagged through the crowd. "Ha! Is that the best you can do?" she crowed. "The B1 battle droids were better!"

"The B1 battle droids were _better?"_ The offense in K-2's voice was sharp as they ducked together around a corner. "No one's going to buy that. Are you _deliberately_ trying to give us away?"

A dead end reared up before them. Jyn spun around. "For a minute there, I thought—"

"I'm sure you didn't think in the least," K-2SO interrupted. "Get moving, Liana Hallick. Their ignorance is an armor I can't extend to you."

Jyn holstered her blaster and seized the nearest handhold she could improvise. Before she could start her climb, K-2SO grabbed hold of her to boost her up. His jointed fingers wrapped around her waist, and she found herself corseted, locked in a tight metal vice as likely to aid in her ascent now as it was to crush her ribcage. She should be frightened. Even the most well-meaning droid might underestimate his strength in this harried situation.

But she wasn't. Her boots lifted off the ground, and what she felt was strength, security, and a touch too human to avoid drawing a comparison. She couldn't remember the last time anyone had picked her up—her father, probably, after a fall, or in paternal reverence of how fast she was growing up. Without warmth, it was _still_ sentient pressure, an outside force she let close enough to exert itself on her now. The hem of her shirt rucked up around her navel and bunched between his fingers. For the next five minutes at least, she would have his fingerprints impressed on her skin.

Her boot heels touched down on the roof, and she slipped free. "Head for the checkpoint," K-2 said from below. "Cassian will meet us there."

"Try not to get shot," Jyn replied as she pulled her scarf up over her nose.

"My chances are good," he replied. "Yours are worse."

"Don't know any other kind."

"And I doubt you ever will."

His receptors burned at her in the darkness. It was on the tip of Jyn's tongue, and the edge of her teeth, to try again for the last word. But she had never been one to prolong the moment, especially not when the situation was dire. She turned and darted off, losing herself in the slanted shadows of the outpost's rooftops. If she needed something to keep her going now, a goal to run toward in the short-term, then hearing a future K-2SO express his disappointment at her survival seemed like a decent enough reward.

She looked forward to it.


End file.
